Laptop and soundcard purchase, petrified

I’m looking at a Dell Inspiron 9400 for a portable music laptop, primarily doing MSP signal processing in real time for installations and live performance. The archives strangely don’t have a great deal of info on laptops but there are some posts which cast them in a bad light. I do need a laptop, but I want to make a safe choice. What do you think?

My aim is to get a system with the lowest latency possible. What kind of soundcard do I need? USB 2.0 is my preference…

Here’s some advice, not sure if it follows with the latest
conventional wisdom…

If you’re going to be doing a lot of performing, a laptop is
definitely a must. (well, unless you have the cash for a portage
company…) It’s less upgradeable than a desktop in a few senses, but
between FireWire and USB 2.0, you can almost get everything as a
peripheral now. If you have the option for a faster hard-drive, it
might be worth the upgrade, as laptop harddrives are often of the 5400
rpm variety. Also, be sure to get plenty of RAM. (at least a gB) (if
you’re comfortable adding it yourself, you can probably save a bit
there) One thing you definitely won’t be able to upgrade is the video
card, so make sure what you pick will be suitable for your needs.

Audio interface-wise, I generally stay away from anything Digidesign,
as they have a reputation for not always playing well with others.
(such as the inability a couple of years ago to have multiple apps
accessing the DAW at the same time; this was described, you guessed
it, as a "feature". (this may have changed since…))

I’ve had good luck with MOTU both personally and in the labs at my
schools, and it looks like their 828mkII is now USB2-flavored, and has
MIDI I/O so you don’t have to lug around a USB-MIDI interface.
Depends on how much horsepower you need, but if you’re doing
installations, the multi-channel output gives you a lot of options.

Avoid the Acer Aspire 1692 WLMi if you have a RME sound card, as the ACPI system
puts it on a very low IRQ priority on Windows XP — and no Linux distribution
could install on it.
I precisely have this model so I am also trying to find a new one but I don’t
get any interesting information from any forum / list. As far as I know, the
Asus, Samsung (Q35 or X11), Panasonic and Apple laptops should be the best, but
it’s not sure ! Anyway, get a Dual Core CPU machine (avoid the Pentium 4 and the
AMD Athlon) with a fast hard disk (some laptops have a 7200 rpm HD) and about 1
or 2 GB of RAM.

The best audio interfaces should be the ones from MOTU or RME (the Fireface 400
for example). Avoid any USB 1 interface as we are not anymore in 1990 even if
digital audio is always very late. As far as I know, only Edirol makes some USB
2 interfaces and if I remember well they have odd hardware buffer sizes instead
of powers of 2 (but they should work with maxmsp — ask a particular user of
these cards to be sure).
Also, there are some great PCMCIA cards (like the RME Multiface) but this type
of connector won’t exist anymore within two or three months :)

Regards
j

Selon Peter McCulloch

:

> Here’s some advice, not sure if it follows with the latest
> conventional wisdom…
>
> If you’re going to be doing a lot of performing, a laptop is
> definitely a must. (well, unless you have the cash for a portage
> company…) It’s less upgradeable than a desktop in a few senses, but
> between FireWire and USB 2.0, you can almost get everything as a
> peripheral now. If you have the option for a faster hard-drive, it
> might be worth the upgrade, as laptop harddrives are often of the 5400
> rpm variety. Also, be sure to get plenty of RAM. (at least a gB) (if
> you’re comfortable adding it yourself, you can probably save a bit
> there) One thing you definitely won’t be able to upgrade is the video
> card, so make sure what you pick will be suitable for your needs.
>
> Audio interface-wise, I generally stay away from anything Digidesign,
> as they have a reputation for not always playing well with others.
> (such as the inability a couple of years ago to have multiple apps
> accessing the DAW at the same time; this was described, you guessed
> it, as a "feature". (this may have changed since…))
>
> I’ve had good luck with MOTU both personally and in the labs at my
> schools, and it looks like their 828mkII is now USB2-flavored, and has
> MIDI I/O so you don’t have to lug around a USB-MIDI interface.
> Depends on how much horsepower you need, but if you’re doing
> installations, the multi-channel output gives you a lot of options.
>
> Peter McCulloch
>